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Tsunami debris still a bit of a scary mystery to Oregon State scientists

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Dr. John Chapman (seen holding the bucket on top of the tsunami dock) says scientists from OSU still aren't clear on what kind of damage could be done by the many species that rode the vessel across the Pacific Ocean from Japan.
(Photo by Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian)

NEWPORT -- After examining dozens of pieces of debris from the 2011
Japanese tsunami, scientists are certain of only this: The invasive
species are out there, but how damaging they ultimately will be might
remain a mystery for years -- and then some.

"Ecologists have a
terrible track record of predicting what introduced species will
survive and where," said John Chapman, a marine invasive species
specialist at Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center.

"But
once things are here, they are a threat. They could explode at any
time. It's just like roulette. Each time something lands here, we pull
the trigger. We're getting more and more every year."

Chapman
and colleagues at the Hatfield facility have been at the center of the
research on invasive species since the tsunami debris began arriving,
including the dock that washed ashore last summer at Agate Beach, as
well as a sister dock that beached off northwest Washington late last
year.

From the beginning, there has been nothing predictable about the debris or the hitchhikers on it, Chapman said.

"It's been a constant surprise. You know how babies have that surprised look on their face? That's us."

Scientists
never expected that so many organisms would survive the ride, let alone
that they would thrive, he said. The dock that washed in on Agate Beach
was at sea for about 450 days.

A dock observed off of Hawaii stayed afloat for about 100 more days, and the dock beached off Washington spent 650 days at sea.

"There
was a huge diversity of organisms," Chapman said. "There are multiple
generations. They were carrying on with life like fleas on a dog's back.
The other thing that was maybe even a bigger surprise is that lots of
things settled on the debris after the tsunami. We know that because it
was on top of the things that were there at the time of the tsunami."

Scientists
know from other invasive species that they may be around for years,
even decades, causing no problems at all until suddenly they become
invasive and threaten native species. One example is a parasite that
sucks the blood from mud shrimp.

"That's been in the San
Francisco Bay since the 1850s," Chapman said. "Then it started to spread
north. The species was described in Yaquina Bay in 2004. We know it was
here for years before. We know that it was in Willapa Bay in the
mid-1980s. We think it was along the coast in very, very low abundances
and then all of a sudden it was everywhere."

Scientists fear now that the parasite could kill off the entire mud shrimp population.

Until
researchers know more about the non-native species that already arrived
here, the most important action they can take is to carefully measure
all the tsunami debris that washes in, Chapman said. That means
assessing the types of species, recording their numbers, their size and
the debris they arrived on.

"This is very important because it
tells us what's next. This is a giant experiment, and if we get a chance
to measure this we can exploit this terrible experiment that should
have never happened.

"I can't see the dock and debris and know
what happened in Japan and not feel an enormous amount of responsibility
for pulling everything good out of it I possibly can."